Buffalo Wild Wings GameNight

Damian Lillard .. Points or Assists?

by GameNight,posted Nov 6 2013 12:50PM

While I don't have the verbose style and prose of my co-hosts Dirt and Sprague, I wanted to post a couple of charts . I spent 2 hours writing a great post and the lovely blog technology we use timed out so will keep this shorter and explain more in a podcast. We are coming up on the year anniversary of the three of us being on the air this Thursday the 7th and during that time we have debated whether the Blazers need Damian Lillard to score or be more of a distributor. In other words, can the Blazers be a playoff team and contender with scoring taking precedence over distributing. Here are a couple of charts

Assists

Games

Record

Percentage

Season

Over/Under

0-4

19.00

6w v 13 L

32.00%

40.20%

-8.20%

5-9 Assists

54.00

21w 32 L

38.80%

40.20%

-1.40%

10-14 Assists

9.00

6w v 3 L

67.00%

40.20%

26.80%

3

6.00

1 & 5

16.67%

40.20%

-23.53%

4

10.00

3 & 7

30.00%

40.20%

-10.20%

5

8.00

1 & 7

12.50%

40.20%

-27.70%

6

13.00

6 & 7

46.15%

40.20%

5.95%

7

16.00

4 & 12

25.00%

40.20%

-15.20%

8

10.00

6 & 4

60.00%

40.20%

19.80%

9

7.00

4 &3

57.14%

40.20%

16.94%

10

4.00

3 & 1

75.00%

40.20%

34.80%

11

4.00

4 & 1

75.00%

40.20%

34.80%

The chart shows the drastic difference in Blazer wins last season when Lillard has more than 8 assists. When he has 8 or more assists the Blazers have a record of 17-9 or .650 which is 25% higher than the season average

Now for scoring

Points

0 - 9

5.00

1 & 4

0.20

40.20%

-0.20

10-19points

36.00

10 & 26

0.28

40.20%

-0.12

20-29points

36.00

21 & 15

0.58

40.20%

0.18

30-39points

5.00

1 & 4

0.20

40.20%

-0.20

The win percentage above the season average is much less for points then it is for assists.. In his 5 highest scoring games last year the Blazers were 1-4. In his 5 most assisted games they were 4-1. The sweet spot for Lillard is scoring 20-25 with 8-10 assists.. A tall order for sure but the priority should be for Lillard to get his team involved early and often and then take over and score. The sign of a great point guard is knowing when those moments occur.

Portland has much bigger problems, namely on defense and points in the paint (29th in the league) and Lillard is far down on the list of what ails this team. Quite the opposite actually. The sample size is small in terms of his career and the narrative will evolve based on personnel but the history of the league and the numbers show point guards that are distributors are superior to scorers. They are not mutually exclusive, however priority must be assigned.